


The First Night is the Hardest

by canadianstuck



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection, Platonic Relationships, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, The power of friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10413339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianstuck/pseuds/canadianstuck
Summary: When Shiro is rescued and becomes part of Voltron, he refuses to let his walls down. After all, who would want to be friends with someone who's part Galra now? Much to Shiro's surprise, the answer is everyone.





	

_The first night is the hardest._ That’s what they tell you in boot camp. The first night away from home is the hardest. The first night of survival after a crash landing is the hardest. The first night after whatever trauma you experience is the hardest.  
The first night might be the hardest, but Shiro can’t remember the last time he had an easy one.

  
Setting foot on familiar soil should mean he’s about to have the best night of his life. Instead, he spends it writhing on a couch, twisting the sheet draped over him into a sweat-soaked knot. He drifts in and out of consciousness, the drugs they tried to dose him with taking their toll. They didn’t give him enough to knock him out, but they sure gave him enough to fuck up his head. Faces fade in and out of his nightmares, and he grapples with them like a fisherman trying to grab hold of an accidentally hooked shark. Tentatively, before deciding they’re better left alone. Once, he sees a lanky boy leaning over him, worry and awe fighting for control of his features. Another time, it’s a sneering Galra druid, fingers reaching out towards him.

  
He can’t decide which is real.

  
Slowly, the drugs wear off. He lays there, eyes close, and waits for the shivering to stop. When he’s sure he’s in control of himself, four faces are looking down. They seem solid, but he’s afraid to touch them in case they pop like so many soap bubbles.

  
“Welcome back,” one with a mullet—Keith? His mind is hazy but it seems sure of that name—says, extending a hand.  
It’s reassuringly, achingly solid when Shiro takes it and pulls himself upright.  
***  
In the days, Shiro trains with the rest of them, helps Allura around the Castle of Lions, and generally avoids talking about himself if at all possible. During the nights, he does his best to sleep. He’s more successful on days they fight the Galra; his exhaustion allows him to lie down and sleep without dreams. Other nights, he’s not as successful.

  
The long fingers reach towards him. He’s pressed in a corner, and there’s no place he can go, nowhere to flee. They wrap around his arm, so cold that he feels like he’s being branded. The other hand holds a wicked syringe, eight inches at least, and there’s laughing like the screeching of a rusty door—

  
Shiro struggles upright against his tangled sheets, breathing hard. He drops his head into his hands, trying to find some safety there, trying to calm down. _Not real_ he tells himself.

  
“You okay dude?”

  
Shiro’s hand is halfway to the knife under his pillow before he recognizes the voice. There, sitting on the floor and dimly illuminated by the pale emergency lighting, is Lance. There’s a tray beside him, and what looks like a mug. As the panic begins to subside, Shiro can smell the spiciness coming from it.

  
Lance frowns. “Shiro. Are you okay?”

  
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Shiro says. “Sorry I woke you up.”

  
Lance stands, all limb and no fat. He looks like a gangly high school student, not a paladin. Shiro is reminded how young everyone is, how back home half of them aren’t even allowed to vote. “Don’t worry about it. I brought you tea,” Lance says, and holds out the steaming mug. The smell reminds Shiro of spiced chai with milk. He looks from Lance to the mug and back to Lance. “It’s not poisoned,” Lance says, rolling his eyes.

  
Finally, Shiro stretches out a hand—the human hand, the Galra hand still clenched beneath the sheets, where Lance can’t see it—and wraps his fingers around the warm mug. He takes a sip, and then a gulp. It tastes delicious, like the tea lattes he used to order back on Earth when he went out with his friends. “Thanks,” he says, cradling the mug against his stomach, feeling the warmth spreading through him. “I…” He trails off. Why is Lance here, at whatever godawful hour of the morning this is? With tea? What do you say, when you’re woken up by nightmares and a member of your giant robot team is sitting in your room?

  
Luckily for Shiro, Lance talks first. “Look,” he starts, “I know you’re the big-shot leader. And let’s be honest here, when I signed up for flight school, you were kinda my hero. And you still are!” he adds quickly. He brushes a hand over his already messy hair and sighs. “You’re the head of Voltron. That’s pretty impressive. And you’re a really good leader, you always keep your cool, you keep us together as a team. But you don’t just have to be an officer of some kind. I’d like to consider us friends.”

  
Shiro stares at him, unsure what to say, and stalls by sipping on the tea. Undeterred, Lance plunges on. “I know what you’ve been through is beyond any of us, because everything that’s happened is beyond us already and fuck, you’ve been through twice as much, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always around. If you ever need to not be the super-cool-flight-commander-of-Voltron for five minutes.” He holds out a hand. “Friends?”

  
It occurs to Shiro that Lance has a point. They train together, and eat meals together, and fight together, but they don’t really talk much, about personal things anyways. They’re comrades in arms, not friends. A part of Shiro aches when he realizes he hasn’t had friends in… since being taken by the Galra. He hasn’t dared to let himself, in case they’re lost again. Sure, Lance gets on his nerves half the time, and he’s not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but he’s a genuine kind of guy. Shiro’s never seen someone who so effortlessly includes others as Lance does.

  
Maybe, he thinks as he looks down at his tea, one friend wouldn’t be so bad. He sets down his mug and stretches out his hand. “Friends.”

  
“You know,” Lance says, “on Earth we shake with our right hands.”

  
Shiro’s stomach clenches as he reflexively buries his hand deeper in the sheets. “It’s not me,” he says gruffly.

  
Lance waves a hand airily. “Sure, it’s Galra tech, not your original arm. But it’s a part of you. And it’s not being used by the Galra. They can’t control you with it. You’re not Galra, Shiro, and you know they could never force you to be. That arm is just as much you as your stupid white hair.”

  
Shiro blinks and slowly pulls the hand out from the sheets. He extends it, half waiting for Lance to recoil, to lurch back from the alien thing masquerading as Shiro, but Lance takes it and crushes it firmly his own, grin spreading from ear to ear. “Friends!” he says. “If you need more tea, there’s more in the kitchen. Allura said it was good for helping people sleep.” Lance bobs his head as if he’s affirming his own statement and then strolls out of the room.

  
It’s a long time before Shiro goes back to bed, only this time, it’s not because of the nightmares.  
***

  
The training deck is a place of refuge for Shiro. There’s nothing but letting your mind get into the flow of the fight, countering and attacking in constantly changing patterns. It’s a good feeling. All the fear and pain and anger fades away, because there’s no time to dwell on it here. Lance hasn’t changed one bit since their talk, except that his smiles seem brighter when he’s telling Shiro a joke and he talks a little more and a little louder.

  
And every time Shiro wakes up now, there’s a steaming pot of tea in the kitchen that never seems to be there when he goes to bed, and never seems to be there any other time of day.

  
One of the benefits of having a friend again, he supposes.

  
The training simulation finishes, and he leans against a wall, panting a little as he catches his breath.

  
“Did you learn to fight like that from the Galra? In the arena?”

  
Shiro looks up to see Keith leaning on the door post. It’s not a malicious question that Shiro can tell; Keith seems genuinely curious. He’s the best fighter on the team, faster even than Shiro, and fiercely protective. It makes sense that he’d want to know what Shiro knows. It still rubs Shiro the wrong way. “Mostly,” he says noncommittally.

  
Keith holds up his hands. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But that thing you did, when the gladiator was going for that hit on your knees… can you show me how to do that?”

  
The “thing” in question is a parry that Shiro learned in the arena, by watching a Galra warrior toy with an alien prisoner. He practiced it for hours in his cell, perfecting the motion. Anything to survive one more day, even when the days weren’t worth surviving anymore. It would be satisfying to see it used against the Galra for a change. “Sure,” he says. “It’s simple really. Use their momentum to force them to move past you. It opens up their back.” He demonstrates the movement slowly, and then faster, and then activates the basic training program and does it twice more.

  
What took Shiro hours of practice and a dozen tries in the arena to master takes Keith about five minutes. In ten minutes, he’s able to combine it with three or four other moves which would take even a Galra warrior down. “Good job. If that’s all you wanted to know, I’ll leave you the training deck. I’m done my workout for today.” Shiro turns to leave, but is stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

  
“I bet between the two of us, we could work out a way to set that up in a group fight,” Keith says from behind him. Shiro glances back to see Keith smiling earnestly. “Beat the Galra at their own game.”

  
It takes over an hour before they’re both exhausted but satisfied with what they’ve worked out. In the training deck, they’re a perfect match. Keith is faster and deadlier, but he operates on instinct; if he knows a move he can use it, but sitting down and thinking out the new strategy is where he falls short. Shiro can hold his own physically, but Keith is in a class of his own. What Shiro can do though is plan, step by painstaking step, envisioning a motion and perfecting it in his mind a thousand times, designing it until he can demonstrate his thinking to Keith. Between the two of them, they can invent something that even Shiro is pretty sure a top-tier Galra fighter couldn’t counter.

  
“Let’s grab some lemonade, or whatever this ship can make that sort of resembles lemonade,” Keith suggests after they catch their breath.

  
In the kitchen, a glass of… something that is distinctly not lemonade but isn’t bad either in hand, the two sit at the table and discuss the new strategy. “I’m glad you’re out here with us,” Keith says suddenly.

  
“Why?” Shiro splutters, nearly choking on his not-lemonade.

  
Keith shrugs. “You’re a good leader. You really keep the team together.”

  
“And you’re a good fighter,” Shiro offers awkwardly. “It’s good you’re on the team too.”

  
“We all have your back,” Keith says, as if Shiro hadn’t spoken. “In a fight I mean. Me, Lance, Hunk, even Pidge can do some pretty incredible things. We’re not just soldiers. We’re your friends.” Catching Shiro’s surprised look, Keith shrugs again. “Well, I am anyways.”

  
If one friend was nice, two is like a revelation. Shiro had just assumed that Keith was too practical for things like friendships. He’s always gruff and prickly as a cactus, snapping at anyone who annoys him even a little. But then again, under the surface… Shiro has seen Keith take hits meant for others a dozen times over, not because they need him too, but because he can’t bear to see any of them hurt. He’s been there, offering silent support in a fight or a conversation when someone needs a moment. They all have their demons, but Keith seems determined to protect everyone from theirs. Even Lance, for all he and Keith snipe at each other. It’s not the behaviour of a soldier. It’s the behaviour of a friend.

  
“We’re friends,” Shiro says, reaching out to shake Keith’s hand before remember Lance’s words. Reluctantly, he stretches out the Galra arm instead, expecting Keith to change his mind, to remember Shiro isn’t fully human anymore.

  
Keith shakes without hesitation, and though it’s short, it’s more because of Keith than anything to do with Shiro’s arm.  
Two friends thinks Shiro. How far we’ve come.  
***

  
Sometimes, Shiro likes to walk around the castle with his tea. He likes the quiet, the time to think, to just be. The nightmares are less, but the Druids and their long fingers still intrude on his dreams from time to time.

  
That was the case tonight, and so he decides to take a little extra time on his lap around the castle. It seems like a nice night to go to the bridge and look out at the stars, see if there’s anything he recognizes out there yet. He tries not to think that recognizing something could just mean what he saw from a Galra ship rather than Earth.

  
The bridge is quiet, the glass crystal clear as it lets in the starlight. They twinkle above, so much closer than Shiro ever thought possible, and still impossibly far away. He sits in the centre of the room, crossing his legs and holding the tea with both hands. It’s easier to forget that one hand is not his own when there’s no one there to observe it.

  
There’s a slight shuffling noise behind him, which he dismisses as one of Allura’s mice until he hears a sniffling. He turns and tilts his head. “Pidge?” he asks, watching as she tries to sneak out of the room. Before she manages to turn her head away, Shiro catches a glimpse of the redness around her eyes.

  
“Sorry,” Pidge says quietly, moving faster towards the door. “I’ll leave you be.”

  
“No, no. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll go,” Shiro says as he stands.

  
“That’s okay.” Pidge sniffs again and reaches for the door.

  
“Do you want to talk about it?” Shiro asks before he realizes he’s asking it. He sounds suspiciously like Lance did, that first night.

  
“Talk about what?” Pidge asks, crossing her arms defiantly.

“Whatever you’re upset about.”

  
“I’m not upset!”

  
“Pidge,” Shiro says gently.

  
She frowns. “Well, maybe a little,” she allows.

  
Shiro shuffles over so there’s room on the platform for the both of them. Pidge watches him like a hawk as she sits down, arms still folded tightly across her chest. “Do you think my mom is okay?” she says.

  
Of all the things Pidge could have said, that was not the one Shiro was expecting. He thought maybe something to do with Matt, or her father, or trying to find them like she’s been doing for weeks. “Your mom?” he asks quietly.

  
“Well I mean, yeah. She doesn’t know what I know. About my dad. Or my brother. That they’re alive somewhere. She thinks they’re dead on Kerberos.” Pidge stops to wipe her eyes and swallow, pretending her voice didn’t just crack a little. “And then… you crashed, and we got into Blue, and now we’re who knows where, for who knows how long. Did you know the days are about twenty-six hours here?” She sniffs. “And my mom doesn’t know where I am. Or Matt. Or dad. She’s all alone on Earth and those bastards won’t tell her anything because they wouldn’t even know what to tell her and—” Her voice breaks off in a sob.

  
Shiro feels briefly guilty that he’s never thought about Mrs. Holt. He’s never asked Pidge about her, or if she was doing okay since Dr. Holt and Matt went missing. There doesn’t seem to be anything to say to cover that particular oversight, so he settles instead of putting an arm around Pidge’s shoulders. She stiffens under the touch at first, and he thinks maybe it’s because it’s the Galra arm—he should have thought of that, and he didn’t, but just because Lance and Keith are okay with it doesn’t mean everyone is—so he starts to withdraw, but to his surprise, Pidge leans against his chest and sobs. He goes from feeling guilty to feeling foolish. Like she would be worried about his arm right now.

  
Touch is not something Shiro is used to, but he realizes in that moment how much he’s missed it. He feels like an awkward octopus, unsure of where to put his arms or how to sit, but Pidge doesn’t seem to mind when he wraps her in a hug.  
It takes a few minutes, but eventually Pidge calms down enough to stop crying. She stays huddled close, sniffing, for several minutes longer before she finally pulls away. “Sorry,” she mumbles, dragging her sleeve across her face, trying to hide just how upset she is. “Sorry,” she says again. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  
“It’s okay, Pidge,” Shiro says. “Here, c’mon.” He walks down to the kitchen, where there’s just enough tea left for two mugs. He hands one to her and watches to make sure she has a sip. “Better?”

  
“A little.” She smiles up at him, though it’s trembly. “Thanks.” They drink their tea in silence for several minutes.

  
“It gets easier,” Shiro says eventually. “It’ll never get easy, but it gets easier.” He looks down at Pidge, who in her oversized sweater looks so much like a boy, and sees the traces of his old crew in her face. “We’ll find them okay? I promise.”

  
“I know we will. You’re a good friend Shiro.” Pidge smiles up at him, a bit more brightly than before, and then yawns. “I’m off to bed. You should be too.” She gets up and pads out of the room, hands still wrapped around her mug.

  
Shiro chuckles softly to himself. “I guess that makes three,” he mumbles into the silent room.

  
The warm mug in his hand steams as if in agreement.  
***

  
A couple days later, Shiro makes a decision. It wouldn’t be right to be friends with most of Team Voltron, but not everyone. He has to talk to Hunk about it, square everything up. His Galra hand twitches as he reaches up to knock on the door, and he frowns at it. What if everyone is just being polite about it? What if they hate it? What if they hate him because of it? Maybe the reason Hunk hasn’t approached him is because of the arm. Maybe everyone would be better off if he left, didn’t force himself onto the team, didn’t make them address him, the less-than-human one.

  
His stomach starts to quiver and he feels himself growing hot. _You can do this_ he tells himself. He forces the feeling down, forces his stiff fingers into a fist, forces himself to knock on the door. No turning back now. The air is getting thicker, harder to suck in, like he’s breathing through a straw.

  
Hunk opens the door, smiles, and then frowns. “Hi. Is there a problem? Do we need to form Voltron?” He’s reaching already for his suit, starting to ramble about Galra and no sleep.

  
Shiro clenches his hand behind his back and pastes a smile on his face. “Relax Hunk, there’s no problem.”

“Oh.” Hunk rubs his eyes. “Why are you here then?”

  
Shiro’s heart sinks in his chest. Maybe he was right, maybe Hunk sees him for what he is. “I, uh, wanted to…” He trails off and takes a minute to find his voice. “Well I, I’d like to be friends?” It comes out as a question instead of the statement he wanted it to be.

  
Hunk frowns again and Shiro braces for the impact of rejection, berating himself for reaching out to someone who clearly doesn’t want to. “Uh Shiro?” Here it comes. “We already are friends?”

  
That was not the answer Shiro was expecting.

  
“I mean, I thought we were. Do you think we’re not? Of course we’re friends.” Hunk looks more confused than upset.

  
“We’re friends,” Shiro says with far more confidence than he feels. “I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

  
“You okay man?” Hunk asks. “Most people don’t just ask their friends if they’re, well, friends.”

  
“It’s been a long night,” is all Shiro says, unwilling to admit to padding around the castle until he was so agitated he felt that this conversation needed to happen immediately.

  
“Galra getting to you?” Hunk’s voice is sympathetic, not mocking, but it’s the wrong phrase to use.  
***

  
In the space between heartbeats, Shiro is back on a Galra ship, a leering soldier leaning up against the glass of Shiro’s cell. “Well Champion,” the soldier growls, spitting the name with a malice Shiro didn’t know was possible, “Galra getting to you? I heard you begged for mercy when they first found you. And now? Trying to kill your own kind for a taste of the arena?” The soldier throws his head back and laughs. Shiro tries not to listen, tries to look like he doesn’t care, but the burning in his face and the warmth of the blood and pus that still ooze from the fresh wound starts to mix with the saltiness of tears. He rubs his face, smearing the blood so the tears can’t be seen, and tries to ignore the Galra mocking him through the door.

  
“There’s promise in this one,” a scraping female voice says. A single long finger presses against the glass. “I think he would make a good subject.”

  
The soldier stands up straight and salutes. “I’ll have him delivered to you at once.”

  
The voices fade, and then Shiro’s arm explodes in pain, cold fingers wrapping around it and burning like brands. A needle comes up, wicked sharp, he can feel it starting to prick the skin, but for all his after to thrash away from it, the cords that hold him are tight, constricting around his chest, stealing his breath—  
***

  
In the castle, Shiro collapses to a knee, shivering, trying to escape something that happened long ago. His breathes are short and choked, his eyes glazed. He pulls at the Galra arm, trying to remove it, to free himself of the burning. A strong hand clamps down on his and he fights it, but it holds fast, keeping him from doing damage.

  
Slowly, he begins to register that the hand is warm, not the living ice that he feels so often in his dreams. The fingers are not knotted bones, but thick and warm and soft. As he realizes this, he can hear someone’s voice, talking slowly and calmly, full of concern. “Deep breathes man, come on, you can do it,” the voice says encouragingly.

  
Shiro listens to the voice and forces himself to draw a breath in for several seconds before letting it out in a rush. “Good start,” the voice says encouragingly, and Shiro realizes the voice belongs to Hunk. “Now again. In… and out. In… and out.”

  
Hunk counts out breaths for Shiro until the shaking stops. They’re sitting on the floor, Hunk watching Shiro for any signs that his panic is about to return. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Shiro says once he feels well enough to speak.

  
“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t ask for any of this.” Hunk pats Shiro’s shoulder reassuringly. “Besides, that’s what friends do for each other.”

  
“We’re friends, Hunk.”

  
“I know buddy. I know.”

  
Friends, Shiro thinks, as he leans back against the wall, the first rays of sun starting to leak into the castle. Soon Lance will be up to complain about something, and Keith will bicker with Lance, and Pidge will arrive with some new device that she’s built, and Hunk will be the anchor that is kind to everyone, and Shiro, well…

  
Shiro will find himself, for the first time in a long time, in the company of his friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This was so fun to write and I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
